BVA ARCHIVE: Profiles
Interview by Stephanie Martin
Gordon Stewart and Linda Hutchison
Now that you are 'in charge' of Communicating Voice, what changes do you have in mind for the Newsletter under your Editorship?
LINDA: I wouldn't say I have 'changes' in mind. Stephanie, your editorship has been excellent. I hope that in our year in charge of the newsletter it will continue to thrive. What I would really like to happen is more of the membership contributing articles, letters, whatever.
We would love the members to be more proactive. It is, after all, the BVA's in-house magazine. So I say, come on, let's hear from you who are reading this.
GORDON: I would like only to underline what Linda has said. We're of one mind on this issue, which isn't always the case. Having a voice, after all, means having the chance to be heard, expressing an opinion, arguing, even.
You are both very well known individually within the voice world, but I suspect that some people may not know that you, Linda, are also Mrs. Gordon Stewart. Is this your first professional joint-role or have you worked together in the past?
LINDA: Oh no! And oh yes! We've done a lot of professional work together. We gave many recitals as a vocal duo (soprano and tenor); a mini tour in a solo quartet (with much of the music arranged by Gordon); and Gordon put on another hat for our voice, flute and piano ensemble - I was the voice and Gordon was the piano. He also played for me in many of my solo recitals - and I can tell you quite dispassionately that he is the best accompanist I have worked with. Apart from playing the piano beautifully, the fact that he sings himself gives him that extra understanding of what a singer needs in performance.
Shakespeare said 'If music be the food of love play on'…(Twelfth Night). Music must have brought you together in the first place or was that happenstance?
LINDA: We met at Else Mayer-Lismann's Opera Workshop. In fact, we met quite a few of our colleagues and long-time friends there. Gordon was at that time on the staff of the Royal College of Music, but had a Vaughan Williams scholarship to study as a singer.
Our first 'date' grew out of a coaching session I had with him - he wined and dined me and then read to me from Lotte Lehmann's 'Interpretation of Song'! May not sound romantic, but believe me it was.
GORDON: I don't actually think much of Lotte Lehmann's book, so there must have been a strong sub-text. There are relationships that you think would have happened, come what may. I can't believe that we wouldn't have met, some time, somehow, nor can I imagine what life would have been like if we hadn't.
I know you both have very well defined and separate areas of professional expertise. Can you perhaps tell me a little about a 'typical' working week if that is possible, or is every week different?
LINDA: I work mainly at home in our studio with a mixed bag of adults, both professional and amateur, covering all types of music. Some come for straight up and down vocal training while others are referred to me for remedial work. My other regular commitment is as the singing advisor member of the fortnightly Medway Voice Clinic team. There I work alongside Manuel Oyarzabal, the consultant, and Jenny Pennington, who is the SLT. Jenny has recently trained me in using the speech studio so now, as well as giving on the spot help and advice to singers, I record the patients after they have been 'scoped'. Next term I am taking on a weekly stint of two classes on vocal technique at the City Lit.
GORDON: The week is not likely to have a repetitive pattern. That suits my nature and varied experience. I've been around, as you might say, and acquired some marketable information. I call myself a singing coach, which covers quite a lot of things, from your actual singing lessons to what is loosely called "interpretation". I do languages in singing - French, German or Italian -English, even.
Basically, I prefer to work with some space, so that we have time to get a performance going which belongs to the performer's individual qualities, but I can do quick fixes for singers who are in urgent need - an audition looming perhaps.
I work with students, teachers and with dedicated amateurs as well as professionals. Among my current clientele is a physiotherapist, and a tenor who's in research at Cambridge - serious, life-saving work.
I think I learn as much from them as they might from me because they know what muscles are capable of in other contexts.
I lecture too, on repertoire, on phonetics, I examine. I've just done a French weekend in Oxford and a couple of weeks ago I did a CD review for Radio 3.
Does your professional and private life coalesce, or is music occasionally banished at the door of number 73?
LINDA: Yes to the first and, in the words of Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore 'Well, hardly ever!' to the second.
GORDON: We probably talk too much about music, and about singing, and speech and voices. But we also talk like good citizens about the world and its problems, though without much sense of being able to do anything about anything.
You are both very enthusiastic supporters of the BVA. Gordon, as well as being actively involved as a member of the PEVoC Organising Committee and the Advertising and Publicity Committee, you have just confirmed that you'll continue as the Chair of the Education Working Party on which you and Linda have served for many years. What does the BVA mean to you both and why have you given so generously of your time to the organisation?
LINDA: The BVA has provided the opportunity for me to widen my knowledge and understanding of the voice in a way I never dreamed of. As a result, my work and teaching have moved forward in an exciting, and really unexpected direction. All my voice clinic work has come about through being a member of the BVA. The time I give to the association is my way of saying 'thank you' and, through the work on the Education Working Party, I help organize study days which create opportunities for us to learn and understand more about the voice through the different disciplines.
GORDON: For me I suppose it's the result of a life-long obsession with voice. Everyone in the family sang, and since I could read music reasonably well from an early age, I played the piano for them. I sang in the church choir. I acted in school plays, and even wrote two, including an epic which lasted ten minutes, set in India.
At Cambridge I didn't sing in the choir at King's, but I played for many of the choral scholars in concerts.
My singing began later, but mine is a voice that needed releasing, and although I was able to use it professionally over the years, it's only (alas) recently that I've found out how to rely on it and extend its possibilities, and that's thanks to Janice Chapman, Ingrid Rugheimer and Sara Harris. I've spoken into microphones for the radio hundreds of times…
I led the Voice Department at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. So one way and another, there's been quite a bit of hands-on experience, but at the end of all of that, I felt and feel I don't know enough.
When I found out about the Voice Research Society, I joined and I've been around the BVA, off and on, ever since…
It's brought me information, access to a whole new range of colleagues with a different slant on the voice, and since I am by and large someone who spends too much time in his imagination, the disciplines that other BVA members live by stretch me and help me to be a broader human being. I think.
This is a question for you both, but if I can start with Linda: When you look back on your career to date Linda, what have been the most rewarding aspects of your life in music? And the same question to you Gordon.
LINDA: If you hadn't put 'in music' at the end of the question I would have said working in a voice clinic. But out of that comes the rewarding work of helping a troubled or damaged singer rediscover the joy of singing.
GORDON: I find the most rewarding thing is working at music, searching for the meaning and the truth. My serious side likes that.
Events I wouldn't have missed include producing for BBC Radio 3 the first ever live music broadcast from the Soviet Union, as it then was (there was a Sony Award for that). Another was listening to Schubert's Serenade for women's voices, which was sung for me alone by the students at the RSAMD as a leaving present. That was an almost unbearable kindness.
Shaw said 'Hell is full of musical amateurs; music is the brandy of the damned' (Maxims for Revolutionists). As in best tabloid speak, 'have you any comment' on this point of view?
LINDA: In what I assume to be best tabloid speak, 'No comment.' On the other hand, Hell may be fun as the amateurs I know give themselves wholeheartedly to their performances and really enjoy themselves.
GORDON: Did Shaw really imagine that we professional musicians are headed for heaven? I think the perfect professional musician is an amateur who has sharpened his skills so that the public doesn't ask for its money back. So maybe Heaven and Hell come together sometimes.
LINDA: And then, if Shaw sees music as the brandy of the damned, and Shakespeare suggests that music might be the food of love. I know which one I would prefer to go with.
GORDON: And if music is the brandy of the damned, then I'm a damned alcoholic.
The multi-disciplinary aspect of the BVA is one of its greatest strengths, but can you identify any disadvantages in such an organisation?
LINDA: I can't say I can think of anything I would describe as a disadvantage, but certainly the multi-disciplinary aspect can make our work in the Education Working Party somewhat challenging in trying to make sure that study days are inclusively appealing.
GORDON: I think the only disadvantage could be if we don't understand our need of one another. I am very grateful to be alongside people from other areas. Musicians are really mountebanks… so in return for learning how to ask the right questions and question the answers, we can perhaps share our experience of performing, and maybe that necessary sense of healthy irrelevance - call it 'lateral thinking' if you like.
Gordon, I know you are particularly interested in Manuel Garcia Jr., but who are your particular heroes/heroines in the world of voice and why?
GORDON: Garcia interests me because although his journey as a teacher started in the world of performance, he wasn't satisfied with just reproducing himself in others. He had that great talent for curiosity which makes him a hero in my eyes.
Others? I was lucky to spend a whole Saturday afternoon interviewing Mirella Freni for a series of opera broadcasts on Radio 3. A star international singer with a passion for "the true" which led her to research her roles, and live them to the point where they existed when she went off the stage. An ideal artist who sings…
Linda, can I ask you the same question - heroes/heroines, who and why?
LINDA: I don't think I go in for heroes and heroines, but there are certainly people I admire hugely - and several of them are members of BVA. However, I am not going to embarrass them by naming them here.
If you got a call from Sue Lawley allowing you five discs each to take to your Desert Island, what discs would you want to take and why?
GORDON: Not much vocal music. Maybe two: the soprano Zinka Milanov singing D'amor sull'ali rosee from Verdi's Il Trovatore, for the extraordinary expressive range of a fabulous human voice. The pianissimo high notes at the end are like a soul at the gateway to paradise.
Cole Porter's Were thine that special face, sung by Brent Barrett. I think this is a perfect song - words and music are inseparable. Porter is the artist I would most like to have been, leaving aside the personal problems - his, not mine.
Schubert's String Quintet in C. Chamber music is the perfect music for me, because I relate to it at a one-to-one level. If Milanov takes me to the doors of Heaven, Schubert takes me inside.
The C minor Piano Quartet of Gabriel Fauré. Fauré is one of my heroes. He's someone else who talks to me directly, and this is a tirelessly interesting piece. I think I could live with those discs.
And finally, another French piece, because I'm a Francophile anyway - Ravel's La Valse played by Louis Lortie. This is an unlikely solo piece, because Ravel always intended it for the orchestra. Louis's performance shows that real music doesn't depend on surface colour. But I'm not sure if I could live without the others I'm not taking with me.
LINDA: Oh dear, what a hard question. There is so much I could choose...
A Mozart opera - either Cosi fan Tutte or The Magic Flute.
Why? If I had to live with the music of only one composer, it would be Mozart. And I came to love the operas through the study I did at Else Mayer-Lismann's Opera Workshop. Professionally I have only sung two complete Mozart roles, although I have been involved in numerous excerpts. I love working with singers on this repertoire.
Pineapple Poll by Charles Mackerras. In my early career I was principal soprano with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. This attractive pot-pourri of Sullivan's music would keep me busy trying to identify which operas the various themes come from as they speed by.
Mendelssohn's Octet. The exuberance and vivacity of this piece would lift my spirits. The brilliance of it is quite astonishing, particularly for a sixteen year old boy. And to think that in the next year he wrote his overture to 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Just imagine how we would regard him if he had died at 18...
A compilation disc of music from the musicals. I love musical theatre but find it hard to choose just one. Hopefully on the disc there will be a 'tap' number so that I can practice to my heart's content on the island - assuming it is not all soft sand!
Un homme est mort - Françoise Hardy. We picked up this CD in a supermarket in France and this track, which we didn't know, quite took our breath away.
With a bit of luck, I shall be on an island next to Gordon, and, provided the wind is in the right direction and he turns up the volume enough, I shall be able to listen to his choice, which I would be very happy to do.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic for the future of sung and spoken voice in the age of Information Technology?
GORDON: Optimistic, because the human race has taken a long time to learn how to articulate what it feels, and I don't see that being replaced. Pessimistic about the importance of spoken and sung language as attention spans get shorter, and long thoughts in long sentences become unwanted.
LINDA: Optimistic. There is always a time of adjustment when new or different influences come about. After all, they said that the cinema would die when television became popular.
Finally, what professional/personal challenges remain for you both in the years ahead?
GORDON: My challenges are always about finishing things. I have always worked most readily when there is a deadline. I need to finish the planned and already fully drafted practical book on the songs of Gabriel Fauré - and then there are the novels and short-stories, three radio plays… They get written, but the re-writing is where the real work is done, as any serious writer will tell you. That's where the challenge is.p>
LINDA: Unfortunately my crystal ball was stolen along with my magic wand and so I am unable to see what challenges await me. However, professionally I look forward to embracing the continuing research and developments in the world of voice, confident in the knowledge that, through the BVA, I have a wonderful network of colleagues who can give guidance and support when needed.
